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Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

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Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#261

Post by excalibur »

asdff wrote: post #254
surfsvammel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me guessing: This sounds like before turn-by-turn navigation was possible. If they had to approximate location via a set list of cell ids, then that doesn't give very precise location data. Also, back then, I am guessing, there where not as good map data available, especially not that would fit in a phone. I would also think that this was before synthesised speech was really possible to do on a phone. The wor…

GPS navigation is 90s tech, though. I had garmin barking turns at me in the early 2000s same as siri today. In fact usually better reception than my cell phone if it was a clear day, since cell coverage is still terrible where you really need need it out in the boonies where gas stations are miles and miles apart.

True, but also your phone utilizes the same GPS signals. It's all about the maps. Your Garmin typically had maps for the whole country preloaded, your phone typically downloads them on the fly. So in the boonies your phone knows exactly where it is in terms of longitude and latitude, but hasn't a clue where anything else is.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#262

Post by DistressedDrone »

scraft wrote: post #210
DistressedDrone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me the number of people who thought they could make money selling emulators, in what is and has always been almost exclusively dedicated to piracy.

It surprises me that people think that it isn't possible to make money selling emulators. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dsemu.dras... Over one million downloads, price £4.99 ;)

You got me there! It shows the kind of market that can emerge when piracy is less practical than purchasing the software.

My point still stands though for emulators on PC where I believe software piracy remains popular.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#263

Post by drewmol »

asdff wrote: post #253
ingenieroariel wrote: post #212

I worked on a J2ME app that needed to access location on phones without GPS, I was in touch with the operator and got a list of cell ids with lat, lon. With that I created a daemon in Symbian that would query the cell id and open up a socket server to give it to the J2ME app. With that we developed an app to request a taxi service, but none of the taxi companies wanted it. Some of the complaints were: 1. GPRS data pl…

Point 2 and 3 are baffling to me. Garmins mounted on the windshield have been a thing in vehicles since the early 2000s at least.

Regarding point 2: When I worked for a valet parking company not too many years ago it would astonish me how many people would 'remember' they must secure their GPS in the glove box, despite leaving much more expensive items like iphones/laptops/purses/wallets in plain sight strown around within their vehicle. They were an easy and common theft target at one time I guess .

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#264

Post by sneak »

asdff wrote: post #253
ingenieroariel wrote: post #212

I worked on a J2ME app that needed to access location on phones without GPS, I was in touch with the operator and got a list of cell ids with lat, lon. With that I created a daemon in Symbian that would query the cell id and open up a socket server to give it to the J2ME app. With that we developed an app to request a taxi service, but none of the taxi companies wanted it. Some of the complaints were: 1. GPRS data pl…

Point 2 and 3 are baffling to me. Garmins mounted on the windshield have been a thing in vehicles since the early 2000s at least.

A lot of people have entirely different perceptions of risk than actual risk exposure.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#265

Post by zerocrates »

zepearl wrote: post #247
umeshunni wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, all 3 of those are valid complaints. #1 was true all the way till ~10 years ago when 3G became popular. #2 is still true is most 'urban' areas. People just take their phones with them when they get out of their cars. #3 is interesting - I think some regions had tried to ban mounting phones on the dashboard, but at this point, they must have given up

Confirming #2: I live in Switzerland (low crime rate etc...) but I would not even dream of leaving my phone visible in the car. Btw. in the 90' I used to detach each-single-time that I parked the car the front panel of the car's radio to then carry it with me (leaving the storage box in front of the passenger seat open, to show that I didn't just put it in there) to discourage people from breaking into the car to ext…

The detachable faceplate for anti-theft reasons was (is?) a very common feature for aftermarket radios/head-units/whatever in the US. Built-in ones have just increasingly moved to not being a discrete, accessible, interchangeable component, another way around.

I still remember when my dad had bought an aftermarket tape-deck-only radio, a Sony I believe, well into the era of the ubiquitous CD player (he just wanted a working tape deck). Someone broke into the car at some point and stole it and I can only assume they were very disappointed after looking closer.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#266

Post by renox »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #209
kelnos wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it then gives the developer weird incentives. If someone in the community decides to build the same feature that the main developer kept as a paid feature, then the main developer won't want to merge it into their version. Then you're stuck: the community member could certainly fork the project with their new feature, or maintain a patchset and forward-port to each new version of the original soft…

> The problem is that it then gives the developer weird incentives. If someone in the community decides to build the same feature that the main developer kept as a paid feature, then the main developer won't want to merge it into their version. See VirtualBox, and to some extent Chrome. For VirtualBox, I'm sure that the Extension Pack could be covered with an open-source effort by the community, and in the case of Ch…

I remember reading recently about a "Firefox bug" caused by a buggy "portability" patch of one of their dependencies.

Accepting 'portability patch' isn't free..

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#267

Post by BEEdwards »

Deathmax wrote: post #234
jbjbjbjb wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give examples? I can’t picture the use cases, I don’t game often.

yuzu, a Switch emulator, had introduced network play support a while ago that was gated behind Patreon subscriptions but was subsequently removed. https://yuzu-emu.org/entry/yuzu-x-raptor/ IIRC, for a while cemu (a Wii U emulator) had builds with support for Breath of the Wild gated behind Patreon early access as well.

It wasn't so much that builds with support for it were behind paywall, more that the latest build which supported BOTW more were.

BOTW would still play just worse, then they'd release the next version on patreon and make the last one free.

Now it just runs well.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#268

Post by tannhaeuser »

asdff wrote: post #253
ingenieroariel wrote: post #212

I worked on a J2ME app that needed to access location on phones without GPS, I was in touch with the operator and got a list of cell ids with lat, lon. With that I created a daemon in Symbian that would query the cell id and open up a socket server to give it to the J2ME app. With that we developed an app to request a taxi service, but none of the taxi companies wanted it. Some of the complaints were: 1. GPRS data pl…

Point 2 and 3 are baffling to me. Garmins mounted on the windshield have been a thing in vehicles since the early 2000s at least.

Can confirm. Had a Garmin/Palm handheld (iQue 3200 or sth) with Garmin mapping software for Windows to prepare/preload map tiles onto SD cards, plus a complex setup involving VirtualPC and NoMachine NX to make it run on my PowerBook.
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